Like a clean cow chewing cud...so Bede describes the poet Caedmon. This blog is a place to report news, calls for papers, news items, and other things of interest to the Late Antique, Patristic, Early Medieval, and Book Arts folk and to just chat about things medieval.
Also see other blogs at The Heroic Age and Modern Medieval.

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Saturday, September 29, 2007

Long ago I set myself the task of reading the Vulgate, preferably directly from the manuscripts. I try to do a chapter a week, in part to keep Latin fresh when I'm not otherwise working in it, as well as just trying to get to know the book and style of Latin that influenced the medieval period so heavily. I'm not always consistent or successful in making the time to do a chapter a week, but today I did. I started a month or so back on the book of Sirach, aka Ecclesiasticus in part because I've not ever read all of it in English much less anything else, and I've a new appreciation for wisdom literature. So here is today's reading:

Monday, September 24, 2007

Aelfric in the Letter to Sigeweard fits things into the typical "ages of the world", identifying 8. He traces in two places Christ's birth in the sixth age of the world, but his final comment on the ages traces the sixth age as BEGINNING at the Ascension and proceeding to Judgement Day. There seems to be an uncertainty about what to do with Jesus' lifetime: does the Incarnation mark a new age, or is it part of the old one and the Ascension mark the beginning of the new? Alefric seems unsure....

Friday, September 21, 2007

This began as a) reading a new article by David Sims in the latest New Testament Studies on Matthew 7 as specifically anti-Pauline. The bloggers at Deinde offered a response to the article, which I had read a couple days before running into the blog. I posted the following comments on the E-Matthew list:

Deinde has a 2 part post on Daniel Sims' latest article. I just readthis over the weekend, but I'm one of those who while perhaps notgoing quite as far as Sims think that it is hard to read Matthew aspro-Pauline or reconcile some of Matthew's statements with Paul. Thepost is interesting in that it seeks to disprove Sims central thesis,that Matthew is writing directly against Paul and not those who havedistorted Paul. IN my view though, the blogger raises some goodissues, but in the end doesn't assail Sims position. For example, oneobjection is that Paul like Matthew has the.....

I didn't quite finish it, but continued in another post.... First, this assumes that some points of agreement must mean that there can not be significant points of disagreement.

Second, most of the passages to which he points, save one, don't seem to me to address the issue the blogger desires: none of them are the defense of Torah or statements about its usefulness. So even if "Matthew" has read Paul's letter to the Romans, which in itself is doubtful, those passages are not going to warm the cockles of Matthew's heart. Even the passage in Romans 13 which Deinde (a team of bloggers, not sure who did that entry), points out is an agreement between Matthew and Paul (Paul's recitation of the "commandments" of which the greatest is love of neighbor as self) does not set these in the context of observing the Torah as Torah--in fact this proto-"love and do as you please" may in fact be read as "set aside the Torah IF you "love" for love fulfills the Torah (or "love is all you need" from the Boys from Liverpool). So rather than affirm Matthew's view of the Law, the statements in Rom 13:8-10 might despite their verbal similarity mean opposite things.

Third, even if Paul and Matthew agree on the point of "love your neighbor as yourself" as the greatest commandment, it might be noted that so do the Pharisees. Yet, one can hardly claim that such agreement with the Pharisees means that these Pharisees, Matthew, and Paul have no sources of rather significant disagreement with one another.

Fourth and lastly, I think the blogger at Deinde has forgotten or at least overlooked passages like Acts 21: 20-21 and further 21:28. The charge against Paul as preaching AGAINST the Torah seems not only a very real one, but Luke takes some pains to illustrate a) the Jerusalem churches' full blessing and acceptance of Paul's message to the Gentiles [note though that he does not here mention James or any other leader] and b) that he subsequently presents Paul as an observant Jew well versed in the Torah and "pirke avoth" to borrow a title. Luke, writing at least Acts after Matthew, is well aware of the attacks on Paul and the perception of Paul, not Paul's followers who are at issue here, but Paul himself. Such a testimony I think underscores the veracity of Sims reading of Matthew 7.

Just to add a few points too: Matthew's Jesus deals with other Jewish groups. In the Sermon on the Mount there are several statements criticizing the practices and positions of Pharisees, Sadduceess, and perhaps even "Essenes", at least positions taken by the Qumran community. And we know from the NT itself that all is not peaceful and unified in the early CHristian movement and that the writers of the NT documents made no bones about criticizing those with whom they disagreed, including the famed disagreement between Peter and Paul recorded in Galatians. Should it then be a surprise if Matthew while criticizing other non-Christian Jewish groups in the gospel should not also be taking to task other Christians who have gone awry from his point of view? Rhetorical question....of course it shouldn't.